How to Feel Good in the Rhythm of the Clock and in the Subjective | Weekly Country

Birds use their biological clocks during migration to compensate for the changing position of the sun, bees have clocks that allow them to seasonally adjust when flowers are open, and circadian clocks are involved in initiating reproduction and migration in monarch butterflies by detecting seasonal changes. Although in humans the amplitude of seasonal variation is probably smaller…

Birds use their biological clocks to compensate for the changing position of the sun during migration, bees have clocks that allow them to seasonally adjust when flowers are open, and the circadian clock is involved in triggering the reproduction and migration of monarch butterflies by detecting seasonal changes. While the degree of seasonal variation in humans is likely less than in other species, our bodies also track the seasons. In the summer, the days get longer, and our circadian network responds biochemically to these changes. In addition, in the summer, we tend to be less busy, and our perception of the passage of time slows down. How do these timers work? Understanding how to adjust our internal clocks can lead to a more enjoyable and healthy seasonal experience.

Russell Foster, director of the Institute of Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience at the University of Oxford, is something of a watchmaker in chronobiology. ‘We discovered that the eye contains a third light sensor. The rods and cones in the retina provide our sense of space or vision, but a small number of prRGCs (light-sensitive retinal ganglion cells) detect ambient light and send information to the brain’s master clock, giving us a sense of time. ‘That was a surprising discovery,’ explains Foster. ‘Mice and humans that lack rods and cones entirely can still set their clocks to the outside world; you can’t see anything,’ he says. ‘You can be blind, have no image recognition whatsoever, and still regulate your biological clock.’ And he points out that ‘because our planet orbits the sun, our rhythms are organised into tight bands of just over 24 hours, in relation to periods of light and dark.’ The same master clock that helps us adapt to the fluctuations of day and night, the suprachiasmatic nucleus, also registers changes with the seasons. For example, the summer morning light puts our clocks ahead of us, and we tend to sleep less than we do in the dark, cold winter months.

However, we live in industrialized societies where the widespread use of artificial light is prevalent; our work and social activities span 24 hours a day, and we travel across time zones, often throwing our internal rhythms out of sync. We abuse our circadian system and sleep-wake cycle, compromising the brain’s ability to process information. Rhythm is an intrinsic property of every cell in the body, and its alteration has a negative impact on overall health and has a broader impact on complex diseases. We are creatures inextricably linked to time, as philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty says: “At all times we are in time, we are time.”

But if each of our cells clings to a temporality governed by a master clock, how can we reconcile such biologically determined mechanisms with our very personal way of existing in time? Time demonstrates here its power to sow confusion. A patient tells me: “I don’t know how long it’s been since I came to see you. Sometimes it seems like an eternity, sometimes it seems like I started yesterday.” We could say that there is linear time and circular or psychic time. The contents of the unconscious seem to be unaffected by the passage of time (an insult received many years ago, having reached unconscious emotional sources, continues to act as if it were current, and nothing seems to change it). Time in psychoanalysis is not the time of the clock: it is psychic time, subjective time governed by the logic of the unconscious. It is different from astronomical time, which is incapable of capturing the temporality of human experience – mortality, the continuity and discontinuity of identities, memory and oblivion.

What can we do to keep our circadian rhythm healthy as the seasons change? The key is to understand it and try not to overdo it, taking into account the body’s needs to simply function effectively. According to Foster, “it’s about being in tune with the demands you place on yourself,” suggesting: “Sleep is important, but above all, relax, go with the season, don’t resist it, embrace it. Embrace the seasonal changes. “We are quite capable of adapting.” It consists of paying attention to temporal cues, the most important of which is ambient light, but there are many others: temperature, interactions, eating and drinking habits… Likewise, by somehow challenging the notion of linear time, it gives space to the events of the psyche, which tend to remain in time because it is not subject to a clock and is not understood in linear time. Its temporality also sets the tone for the subtle dialectic of continuity and change within us.

David Dorenbaum is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.